


Metallic Butterflies

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Implied/Referenced Medication Addiction, Reginald sends Five on a mission in Russia to monitor/spy on Vanya, Sexual Content, Surveillance/Stalking, slightly dark AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28961814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "I... I think I heard something tonight." Vanya said in a small voice as if afraid someone would listen."What?" Tatiana asked skeptically."Voices, whispers. Something about the number Five." Her last sentence sounded more like a question than a statement.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jules5971](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jules5971/gifts).



> This is for @Jules5971, who I love dearly. She's one of the most supportive, sweet (and salty) people I have ever met and is incredibly creative, this AU is one of the ideas we had brainstorming together.  
> Thank you so much for being so encouraging and nice, Jules. I hope you like this. <3

"Are you hungry?" Tatiana asked warmly, trying to bring the girl back to her reality.

"Huh... No, not really." Vanya replied after a few seconds, her opaque and distant gaze still fixed on the wood of the table. She was shaking and her voice sounded trembled as her teeth chattered.

"And how was it at school? Don't you want to tell me about your day?"

"It was normal."

"Are you sure?" She whispered, examining the girl closely, perhaps afraid to be pushing her.

It had been three weeks since Vanya's dosage had increased, and she didn't seem to be adjusting as well as it was expected.

In the beginning, when the girl was still two years old, the prescription was only half a pill every day. On her fifth birthday, Reginald instructed Tatiana to increase the dosage to one pill, only for a few weeks later, to say that he had made a mistake and that it should be two pills. Now, at seventeen, nearly eighteen, the man had called Tatiana again, saying that it would take three pills a day to stabilize her.

In the first four days, she had some problems with the medication, having a lot of nausea and insomnia. But even now that the girl seemed to be used to the new dosage, her behavior was still unusual.

Although Vanya was always an extremely reserved girl, her close friends and family usually managed to approach her easily, making her laugh, share stories, and even little enthusiastic soliloquies about some piece she was learning to play on the violin or some detective novel of her interest. Although incredibly timid, she was always courteous and friendly. Nothing ever came close to the strange misanthropy that now seemed to take over her conduct.

"Yeah, it was okay." She assured her quickly, still avoiding eye contact.

The girl felt her stomach churn with the way she was lying, but perhaps lying was the most prudent decision considering the circumstances. She didn't want her mother to worry about it, not when her work routine and daily household chores were already so exhausting.

"If you want I could..." Tatiana tried to suggest something, but Vanya interrupted her almost immediately.

"I need to shower." Her voice sounded harsher than she intended, and she jumped up from her chair, marching to her room with hurried strides.

Her clothes were soaked, dripping on the floor, and her shoes were so wet that they made strange noises with every step she took.

Tatiana watched the tiny figure of the girl run to her room, leaving puddles of water on the wooden floor and on the plush brown carpet in the living room. It was becoming increasingly impossible to understand Vanya's behavior.

And as much as she tried, Tatiana just would never know how to react to finding her daughter soaked, shivering, and sitting at the kitchen table in a state of stagnation rather than trying to warm herself up.

"Did you take your meds?" She screamed seconds after listening to Vanya slamming her bedroom door.

"Yes!" She shouted back, trying to suppress her sobs and tears so her mother wouldn't notice the way her voice sounded unusually squeaky.

"I'll make soup!" She screamed again, but Vanya did not respond.

It had been two years since they had both moved away from the girl's grandparents and yet none of them were used to the unsettling silence inside the house. The walls were not thin, but they were so far from the city and the urban noises that they could hear everything, from Vanya's whimpering to the whistling of the wind, the swaying of the pines with the blizzard, and the cracking of the wood in the house...

Perhaps that was why Vanya had created the incessant habit of practicing the violin more than five hours a day, to fill the silence. But perhaps, and that was a possibility that Tatiana pondered a lot about, it was to fill the anguishing feeling of loneliness, the emptiness.

"Do you want it?" Vanya heard her mother scream again and answered a short "Yes!", even though she no longer remembered what Tatiana was talking about.

This time, while the girl removed her clothes, she closed the curtains on the bedroom window. Maybe she was becoming paranoid, there was no living soul within a radius of two kilometers, but Vanya was almost certain that she had been followed.

The strange sensation of being constantly watched had started about a month ago. She was always looking back, checking if she was really alone, asking friends to accompany her around, sometimes even holding a switchblade. That Friday, however, was different.

Vanya was almost absolutely sure that she had seen the figure of a man following her through the pines, it was easy to spot him with the snow that covered the entire forest. But when she started running, he disappeared. That's when the ice broke.

All of the girl's sense of direction had completely dissipated as panic spread through her body. She didn't even notice when her shoes started to slide over the lake's ice until her body was completely immersed in the cold water.

When Vanya woke up on dry land after drowning, it was only then that the girl was absolutely sure she was being followed. She was barefoot, whoever saved her, left her shoes turned upside down, so they would dry faster.

“Vanya?” Tatiana's voice was clearer this time, suddenly interrupting the girl's thoughts. Vanya knew immediately from the sound that her mother was probably glued to the bedroom door.

“Yeah...” She stammered.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes, don't worry mom.”


	2. Chapter 2

Much to Vanya's despair, she fell ill for a few days after the accident. Everything was worse when she was alone. When she had to stay in bed, unable to read because her head hurt, unable to practice the violin, unable to fill the silence with some harmonious and romantic melody, listening only to the void.

Sometimes when the girl was exceptionally bored and couldn't sleep to make time go by faster, she would turn on the television. She tried to watch something and ended up even more bored than before, preferring silence to whatever was going on in the cooking channel.

During the nights, however, Vanya wanted to turn on the television. Even if she woke Tatiana up in the process, and even if the uninteresting stories in the soap operas made her want to tear her eyes out, she would prefer that than to have to deal with her own thoughts.

It had happened twice that she woke up in the middle of the night listening to murmurs, male voices, sometimes her mother's voice. At first, Vanya assumed it was just a delusion, a hallucination.

On the third night, she tried to watch some soap opera, just to distract herself from the voices, but they didn't leave.

After a few minutes, her mother appeared in her room, asking her to turn off the television, indignant that she was awake so late.

When Tatiana left, the voices stopped, but they came back the next night.

Now all she could do was lie down all day and all night, hoping that the headache, the voices, and insomnia would go away.

"V! I'm home!" Her mother's voice echoed through the house, comforting and warm as always.

"I brought you soup!"

"Soup again?" Vanya shouted back.

"Yeah, you want it?"

"Of course I want it!"

Vanya went to the kitchen in hurried steps, completely ignoring the stab of pain that suddenly came to her head when she got up from the bed.

"How was your day?"

"Kinda bad, how about you?" Tatiana asked with a soothing smile as she placed the soup in a porcelain bowl and handed it to Vanya.

"Awful. I couldn't even read anything cause my head hurt."

"Did you take any meds?"

"No." She mumbled sheepishly after sitting at the table.

Drug discussions were not exactly recurring between the two, but it was still a sensitive subject. Several times Vanya tried to avoid taking the meds or tried taking a lower dose. Whenever that happened, Tatiana always ended up finding out in one way or another.

“Why are you so reluctant about taking the medication that you need?”

“My head wasn’t hurting that much.”

After a few seconds of deafening silence between them, Vanya, probably without thinking about her words, murmured:

"I... I think I heard something tonight." She said in a small voice as if afraid someone would listen.

"What?" Tatiana asked skeptically.

"Voices, whispers. Something about the number Five." Her last sentence sounded more like a question than a statement.

“They were speaking in english.” She added.

The expression on Tatiana's face became indecipherable for a few seconds, but then it squirmed into something similar to _pity_.

"Vanya, dear... Did you take your meds?"

The girl couldn't help but roll her eyes in annoyance.

“I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“I know what you meant.” Vanya interrupted her and immediately got up from the table, going to her room with furious steps.

“Vanya? You didn't eat the soup!” She screamed.

"Put it in the fridge!" She responded in the same tone before slamming the bedroom door.

The first tears streamed down her cheeks silently, without permission, and everything became cloudy. Her face was so hot that the girl thought she was feeling sick as she started to sob, her knees buckling and falling to the floor as she covered her eyes with her hands. As if she was trying to hide her crying from someone, even though she was completely alone in the room.

_‘I’m not crazy.’_

_‘I’m not crazy.’_

_‘I’m not crazy.’_

The voices would come back eventually. Whatever followed her on the day of the accident, and whatever saved her, it would come back. And it couldn't be a hallucination, it couldn't. She was taking the medication right and on time, she couldn't be losing her sanity, not when she was doing everything right. Not when she was trying so hard.

“Vanya?” Tatiana's voice was muffled and distant.

The girl tried to suppress her sobs.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You did.”

She knew it was no use trying to pretend she wasn't crying, at least not for her mother. Tatiana knew her every intonation, every resentment, every tear, and every intention. It was no use pretending, there was no use running away. She was her best and only friend.

“I didn’t, of course I didn’t. I love you. I would never think that. I just want you to be okay.”

The words "I love you" made her cry even more. She didn't understand why, but maybe that was just a way of communicating affection that she didn't understand.

_‘How can you love me if you don't believe me? If you don't support me?’_

_‘If you're not true with me? If you hide things from me?’_

_‘How can you think you know what's best for me just because you love me? Only I know. Only I know.’_

_‘What if I don't want this anymore?’_

“Vanya? C'mon, you need to eat.”

"I'm not hungry." She sobbed after a few seconds.

* * *

During that night, the voices came again, this time even more aggressive than before. Most were just random words in the midst of incomprehensible murmurs, but this time Vanya decided to get up and press her ear against the door to hear them.

There were three voices.

One of them was low, masculine, velvety, and said everything slowly with unrestrained impatience as if he were scolding and threatening a disobedient child.

The second one was also a masculine voice, almost inaudible. He had a strong accent, always seeming to be indignant, saying everything angrily, like ordinances.

The third one was her mother.

Vanya immediately picked up a notebook and began to write down everything she heard, but nothing seemed to make much sense.

"He had to." Tatiana's voice whispered in what seemed to be an apprehensive tone. But the second voice, the almost inaudible, and with a strange accent, said immediately: "He (...) anything." It was all she could understand, but she was pretty sure he had said something similar to "He didn’t have to do anything."

Then the first voice, the velvety and impatient voice, spoke again. And this time, Vanya managed to understand every word when he said, "She could have died." in an exasperated tone.

"I will ..." The older man said something but was suddenly cut off. The sound was so low that it seemed to be coming from some telephone or electronic device.

“Number three.” She thought she heard the same authoritative voice speak.

“(...) fucking won’t.” The velvety voice of what appeared to be a younger man interrupted him again.

“No, (...) trust Five.” Tatiana spoke assertively and clearly, even though her accent was extremely accentuated.

After a few minutes of listening to the discussion, the girl fell asleep. This time she was absolutely convinced, perhaps to the point of stubbornness, that her mother was lying. And even in that inert state, with her lids weighing and her breathing becoming slower and slower, Vanya could still hear the conversation.

Someone was walking impatiently around the living room, tapping the sole of the shoe on the wooden floor as if he were trying to be loud on purpose. The older man's voice was still extremely hard to hear, and she decided that he could only be talking on the phone. Tatiana, however, sounded apprehensive. She said everything in whispers, always repeating that she didn't want “number three” and “number six” to get involved in the case, that she only trusted “number five” to deal with the situation.

Everything seemed to be about codes, but Vanya still managed to realize that they were talking about her. She was able to hear them discussing the medications and the day at the lake.

When Five teleported into the room, she was sitting on the floor. Her eyes were closed, and her head leaning against the door. A pained expression on the girl's features indicated that perhaps she was having a nightmare again. The notebook was lying on the floor next to her lap, the pen still between her fingers as if she were still prepared to take new notes.

Five studied the girl carefully, trying to tell if she was really asleep or just pretending. He knew very well that she was already suspicious about them, leaning her ear against the door to listen to the voices that she was absolutely sure were not imaginary and connecting the dots about everything that had happened.

Sometimes, when Reginald scolded him for his carelessness, the boy thought that maybe he should have left her at the lake.

Other times, at moments like this, when he watched the girl's small face take on an anguished expression, or when she pushed her bangs out of her eyes with her thin, callused fingers in a timid gesture, he felt his job was to protect, to not monitor.

And although he was still frustrated by the argument he had with his father and Tatiana, Five tried to be careful when holding the girl in his arms. Much like he did on the day of the accident.

When he put her to bed, she made an incomprehensible murmur, and for a few seconds, he stood there. Immobilized, waiting for her to say something, to reveal that she was awake the whole time, that she knew about him, about the purpose of the drugs, and Tatiana's deal with Reginald.

But nothing happened. Maybe he was imagining things.


End file.
